Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "Banijay History"
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Ben Siener Perhaps the real goon is the person who doesn't even know the correct name of the Japanese battleship concerned? Isn't it interested that people tend to resort to insults when they are out of sensible comments?
Anyway, for what it is worth, I will try again. Battleships didn't have wooden decks, as you seem to think. They had thin wooden planking (usually teak) laid over steel decks, and the following is an explanation of why, from a former crewman aboard USS Iowa:-
The deck was covered in teak wood. It served a number of purposes. The wood deck served to insulate the boat from the heat of the sun making the below decks more comfortable.
The wood also wasn’t as slippery when oil or grease got on the deck. Oil and Grease made a steel deck, even with a slip resistant coating, dangerously slippery. The wooden deck performed better and could be cleaned up rather quickly in the heat of the moment. Stains on the deck were scrubbed with a brick and a modified handle. Each bosun took one plank and pushed the brick back and forth until the wood was clean, a pain staking process. If the wood was too stained, it could be easily replaced.
As others pointed out, teak wood is slip resistant when wet. Additionally the wooden decking would allow the standing water to drain quickly so there was less chance of having standing water. The teak wood also protected the deck from normal wear and tear.
There were a lot of people and equipment moving around on deck, and eventually the standard slip resistant material would need maintenance which was a huge pain. Wood could be replaced quickly and easily.
Perhaps, were you to read up on the practical problems involved in maintaining a large warship at sea, you might began to understand.
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@potusdumbledore3481 My opinion is based on facts, not prejudice. Hitler did not order his generals to halt, the order came from the commander of Army Group A, von Rundstedt, for sound military reasons. Since their breakthrough on the Meuse, the German armour had travelled a considerable distance on their own tracks, and were sorely in need of a period of servicing and maintenance, especially since they would shortly been needed for the drive south. This, by the way, was not seen by most German generals, at the time, as the foregone conclusion that it actually became.
Consequently, von Rundstedt ordered the halt on the line of the Aa canal on 24 May. This is clear from Army Group A's war diary, which was captured after the war.
Hitler could have countermanded the order, especially since he was at von Rundstedt's headquarters at the time, but chose not to, firstly because he agreed with the reasons, secondly because his knowledge of the area from WW1 convinced him that the area was unsuitable for tanks, and thirdly because, on 23 May, Goering had told him that the elimination of the allied troops in the Dunkirk area was 'a special job for the Luftwaffe.'
Your suggestion that the Luftwaffe was only allowed to target ships is nonsense, and not worthy of comment. Certainly, it made sense to target the ships, because the evacuation could not proceed without them, but no such restrictions were ever imposed, unless of course you can provide documentary evidence to the contrary, perhaps?
Yes, Hitler always regarded his main enemy as the Soviet Union, but the attack in the west was intended to neutralise France as an enemy, and persuade the United Kingdom to accept peace terms. It was always a gamble, and it almost succeeded, and probably would have done had Halifax become Prime Minister.
If the British had allowed an armistice to be, effectively, imposed upon them, then Hitler could then have turned East without hindrance, and carried on butchering Jews, Slavs, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies, mental defectives, homosexuals and any else who caught his eye, to his heart's content. You might think this might have brought about a better Europe, happily my parents' and grandparents' generation did not.
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Nothing to do with National Pride. The British began a programme of modernisation, starting with their older battleships first. The policy was to take no more than two ships out of service at any one time. The first four were three of the Queen Elizabeths and Renown. The third and fourth of these, Queen Elizabeth & Valiant, were almosat completed in September, 1939.
Hood was programmed, had war not intervened, for reconstruction along the lines of Renown, from 1941.
Hood was not a traditional battlecruiser, by the way. Her redesign after Jutland resulted in a ship with armour very similar to that of a Queen Elizabeth, but some six knots faster. Much more a fast battleship, in fact.
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Hood was far more a fast battleship than a true battlecruiser. Her armour was comparable to that of the Queen Elizabeth class battleships. The previous battlecruiser class, the Renowns, had 6 inch armour belts. Hood had a 12 inch belt.
The battlecruisers at Jutland were not 'thrown into the line with battleships in order to augment the fleet's firepower.' They fought as a separate fleet, supported by four fast battleships,
Hood was one of four capital ships available to Tovey with the speed to chase down Bismarck. Two, King George V and Repulse, were positioned in the Iceland-Faroes Gap, and the other two, Hood & Prince of Wales in the Denmark Strait. These were the two exit points into the wider Atlantic, and it was essential to prevent Bismarck & Prinz Eugen from breaking out, which would have made them far more difficult to hunt down. The reasoning, without ther benefit of hindsight, was that both units were independently capable of doing this.
It worked, by the way, in that the damage Prince of Wales inflicted on Bismarck was sufficient to force Luyjens to call off his mission and make for St. Nazaire.
The simple fact is, that if Hood had not been there, Prince of Wales could not have been sent unsupported.
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If I recall correctly, Germany tended not to bother declaring war, and the first warning their victims received was the arrival of bombers, troops, tanks, and einsatzgruppen.
See Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Belgium, & The Soviet Union for further details.
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The Three battlecruisers which were sunk at Jutland were not Hood's sister ships. Hood was much better armoured, and actually far more of a fast battleship than a true battlecruiser.
Hood's weakness was her 3 inch deck, compared to the 6.25 inch of the Nelsons, the 6 inch of the KGVs, or the 4.7 inch of Bismarck. Holland was fully aware of this, and, rightly, attempted to close the range as quickly as possible, to take the threat of plunging fire out of the equation. At closer range, Hood's 12 inch belt was not seriously inferior to Bismarck's 12.6 inch. He had almost achieved this when Hood received her fatal hit, although ironically almost certainly not from plunging fire.
Incidentally, the best range to bring about a favourable possibility of a hit was probably around 15,000 yards.
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Yes, of course they did. After all, when she sank the only damage to Bismarck was that she had lost all her main armament, her bridge and command staff, and her internal communications. Oh, and she was extensively on fire below decks, settling by the stern, and listing heavily. Barely scratched, really.
Are you one of those who thinks that, if Bismarck had been scuttled, then she wasn't quite so sunk? You would be hard pressed to maintain that argument.
Incidentally, the 'Englishman' who captained HMS Rodney, Frederick Dalrymple-Hamilton, was born in Givan. Girvan is a small burgh on the Firth of Clyde, in south Ayrshire. Do you know where that is? Thought not.
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@franciscoguzman1034 I didn't say Hood was a battleship, I said she was as well armoured as a WW1 battleship. Hood had a 12 inch belt, and 3 inch horizontal armour. An Iron Duke had a 12 inch belt and 2 and a half inch horizontal armour. Hood had been extensively redesigned after Jutland.
The Germans built so-called 3 pocket battleships, these being Deutchland/Lutzow, Admiral Scheer, and Admiral Graf Spee. These displaced around 15000 tons, (although falsely declared as 10000 tons to fit in with the Treaty of Versailles), had 6 x 11 inch guns, belt armour of 2.4-3.1 inches, and horizontal armour of 1.6 - 1.8 inches. The Scharnhorsts and the Bismarcks were totally different. In the case of the Bismarcks, these displaced around 51000 tons, had 8 x 15 inch guns, 12.6 inch belts, and 4.7 inch horizontal armour. They had nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with the so-called pocket battleships.
Hood, by the way, was not fast because she was lightly armoured, but because a large proportion of her 44700 tons displacement was devoted to her power plant.
Please don't feel obliged to apologise. I am used to correcting the errors of others.
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@trentslvis4332 You clearly don't know much about the action, do you? Brinkmann, captain of Prinz Eugen, identified Hood & Prince of Wales as a heavy and a light cruiser. Korvettenkapitan Paulus Jasper, the first gunnery officer, identified Hood as 'probably a cruiser or destroyer' and ordered the main armament to be loaded with 8 inch HE shells, which was what Prinz Eugen fired for the (short) duration of the action. Prinz Eugen opened fire on Hood at 0555, and scored the hit at 0556, with, probably, her second salvo.
I didn't say that Prinz Eugen only carried HE shells, by the way. I said that she was using HE during the action. If you don't read what people who know more than you write, it is no wonder that you get things wrong. If you don't believe me, simply look up any decent book on the action. Try 'The Battle of the Denmark Strait - A Critical Analysis of the Bismarck's Singular Triumph' by Robert Winklareth, written in 2012, for a start. You might learn something.
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Your 'ship decades ahead of it's time' actually had incremental armour, of a design which had not been used by the US or British navies for around 20 years, low angle secondary armament when the US & British had been installing DP secondary armament in their new capital ships, and four twin turrets, requiring a greater length of armour, at a time when everyone else was using three multiple gun turrets. Add to that a weight of broadside inferior to the Nelsons, the King George Vs, and the North Carolinas, and what your 'ship decades ahead of it's time' was in reality was nothing more than an improved WW1 Baden.
All Bismarck had was the speed to avoid action. Once this was lost, no wonder that a 15 year old battleship reduced her from a warship to a target, by destroying most of her main armament, her bridge and command staff, and her internal communications, in about 20 minutes on 27 May, 1941. During the same period, Bismarck achieved precisely no hits on anything in return.
Yes, Bismarck successfully sank an equally outmoded capital ship on 24 May, but against a Nelson, or a properly worked up KGV, she was simply outclassed.
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You don't consider that the facts that Bismarck was listing increasingly seriously, settling by the stern, had lost her bridge structure, command staff, main armament, and internal communications, and was a mass of uncontrollable fires below decks, might, just possibly, have been relevant?
Bob Ballard attributed the sinking of the Bismarck to 'The British' and David Mearns said that any scuttling attempt would have hastened the sinking by 'a matter of minutes only.' I suspect that they know rather more about the subject than you.
By the way, whatever you may believe, should a ship be scuttled, it really isn't any less sunk.
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Just to correct a few of your errors.
1). Hood was not a traditional, lightly armed, battlecruiser. Her armour was on a par with a Queen Elizabeth class battleship.
2). Hood was one of 4 capital ships available to the Home Fleet with both the speed and firepower to challenge Bismarck. The others were KGV, PoW, & Repulse.
3). There were two exit points into the wider Atlantic, these being the Iceland-Faroes Gap & the Denmark Strait. It was essential that the German force be prevented from breaking out, as it would be harder to chase down if it did.
4). Tovey, therefore, sought to place a force in both locations capable of preventing such a breakout. To this end, he positioned his strongest & weakest ships, KGV & Repulse, in the Gap, and the other two in the Strait.
5). Holland's tactics were not 'blundering.' He had hoped to approach head on, but loss of contact, and a German change of course, prevented this. Holland was well aware of Hood's probable weakness against plunging fire, and sought to bring about a closer range engagement, where Hood's 12 inch belt, was only slightly inferior to Bismarck's 12.6 inch one. The position of Hood's rudder as found on the wreck suggests that he was within moments of achieving this.
6). If you believe Hood should not have been there, and PoW should not have been there, what alternatives would you have offerred?
7). Ironically, as a result of the battle, Bismarck received sufficient damage, albeit from PoW, to force Admiral Lutjens to abandon his mission, and make for St. Nazaire. The breakout was unsuccessful, the threat to the convoy system by German surface ships negated, and the German surface fleet rendered largely irrelevant for the rest of the war.
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@VincentComet-l8e A fast battleship does not suddenly become become a battlecruiser as it ages. Were the North Carolinas (12 inch belts) or the Iowas (12.1 inch belts), battlecruisers?
When did I suggest that Repulse was ever a serious challenge to Bismarck? She accompanied KGV simply because she was fast enough, and Tovey hoped that in any engagement Bismarck would concentrate her fire on the ship with the greater weight of broadside, KGV, leaving Repulse to fire unmolested.
Hood's belt, as you seem unable to grasp, was twice that of Repulse, by the way. You are fortunate to have the benefit of hindsight, not available to Tovey, because it is only with hindsight that it could be claimed that Hood was not fit to engage Bismarck.
I actually agree with you, as Tovey did, that Holland should have placed PoW in the lead, given her much superior armour. However, your claim that PoW almost met the same fate as Hood is not credible, as had the shell from Bismarck not been a dud, it would certainly have exploded in the water short of PoW's hull, as a whole host of gunnery experts have pointed out.
Where does your imaginary eight ship squadron come from, by the way?
Incidentally, Rheinubung was called off immediately after the Denmark Strait action. What makes you think it wasn't?
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I will try to make this simple. There were two exit points into the wider Atlantic, the Denmark Strait & the Iceland-Faroes Gap. During Operation Berlin, Scharnhorst & Gneisenau had used the Strait, whilst Tovey had expected them to use the Gap, and concentrated his fleet there. Thus, the twins were able to carry out a successful (by German standards) commerce raiding cruise, and get back to Brest, because they were harder to hunt down in the wider Atlantic.
This time, Tovey placed forces in both exit points, with two capital ships and two heavy cruisers in the Strait, and two capital ships, a carrier, & three light cruisers in the Gap. Both forces, without the obvious benefit of hindsight, were deemed capable of preventing a breakout. Actually, it worked, in that the action in the Strait led to the abandonment of the German operation, and the failed attempt to run for St. Nazaire.
Submarines had half the surface speed of Bismarck/Prinz Eugen, and were better positioned off ports where German warships were based than sent wandering around the Atlantic, effectively on the off chance. For the same reason, U-boats never managed, later in the war, to get anywhere near the big troopers, such as the Queens & Aquitania.
Of course carrier-based aircraft were used. Victorious' aircraft carried out an attack on Bismarck, scoring one torpedo hit, whilst Ark Royal's air group scored the hit which crippled Bismarck's stern, leading to her sinking. They also carried out a pattern of searches, whilst Coastal Command's long range aircraft were undertaking continuous reconnaissance. Indeed, it was a Catalina flying boat which located Bismarck. At the time of the action in the Strait, however, no strike aircraft were anywhere near.
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@bullettube9863 'In a prophetic 1939 note, the director of naval construction warned that if she was not completely modernized there might be “eternal cause for regret.” ' But 1939 was not 1920, as you mentioned in an earlier comment. By then, the Admiralty was aware that Hood was due for modernisation, and the 'Large Refit' which would have seen Hood re-emerge looking like a cross between a KGV & Renown, was scheduled for 1941. However, what Harold MacMillan later described as 'events, dear boy. Events' intervened.
The RN had begun a programme of modernisation in the 1930s, starting with the Queen Elizabeths & Renown, but were only able to withdraw two capital ships at a time. Hood was a newer ship, and was next in line.
However, she was not, like the old 'R' class, seen as obsolete, and the fact is that in May, 1941, she was one of only four capital ships in the Home Fleet with the speed and firepower to enable her to catch and engage Bismarck.
Certainly, her armour did not compare with that of the KGVs or the Nelsons, but it did to the modernised QEs.
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There were 2 heavy cruisers in contact with the Nazis plus when Hood & Prince of Whales came out, they were escorted by destroyers. Where were they? Prince of Wales engaged and damaged Bismarck, the cruisers were shadowing but the action ended before they could close, and due to heavy seas the destroyers had not been able to keep up.
'I understand there were ice flows meaning that Bismarck could only go forward back or left.' Your understanding is wrong.
'Also the british were notoriously bad shots, as had been shown at Jutland & Falkland islands.' You think so? Spee's armoured cruisers were both sunk, Rodney hit Bismarck with her third salvo, destroying her forward turrets and Bridge, whilst, at North Cape, Duke of York hit Scharnhost with her first salvo, and 32 of 51 broadsides during the action were straddles.
Oh, & at Jutland, between 7.00 & 7.45 p.m., when the two battlefleets actually engaged, there were 30 hits on German capital ships, and 2 on one British capital ship.
'I can't help but think.' Given your lack of knowledge, are you sure that you actually think at all?
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The was one German battleship, and one heavy cruiser. There were four capital ships available to the Home Fleet with the speed to catch Bismarck. The Germans had two passages through which they could reach the wider Atlantic, the Denmark Strait and the Iceland-Faroes Gap. The best and weakest British ships, King George V & Repulse, went to the Gap, and the second and third, Hood and Prince of Wales, to the Strait.
The calculation made by Admiral Tovey was that, supported by two heavy cruisers in the Strait, and three light cruisers in the Gap, each force was, independently, capable of stopping the Germans. In point of fact, he was right, in that the damage inflicted on Bismarck during the action was sufficient to force the German commander to abandon his mission and make, in the event unsuccessfully, for St. Nazaire.
In 1941, the RN did not have limitless battleship resources, especially with the events taking place in the Mediterranean, but made the best use of what they had, and did successfully eliminate the threat to the Atlantic convoys, though at a terrible cost.
One thing that the British did understand from long experience, however, was The Price of Admiralty.
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@thehotsixer1 I'm not going to argue because I tend to agree. The problem in the UK is firstly that our Ministry of Defence is probably the most badly managed government organisation in the country, and secondly that the Navy is the Cinderella among our armed forces, as successive Heads of our Defence Staff have been from our army or, even worse, the RAF.
Any serious British naval historian will tell you that, in reality, the most implacable foe the RN has had in the last 100 years has been the RAF. Just read up on how, between the wars, the RAF destroyed the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm, and how, even now, the new carriers will be bedevilled by a shortage of F35cs because they are under RAF control.
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@shelbysellers1397 Why not simply present your evidence that the practice was still being followed, instead of simply resorting to insults? That, of course, presupposes that you have evidence?
Just for interest, William Jurens, William Garzke, and Robert O. Dulin Jr. concluded that Hood's destruction was most likely caused by a 380-mm shell from Bismarck that penetrated the deck armour and exploded in the aft 4 inch magazine, igniting the cordite propellant, which in turn ignited the cordite in the adjacent aft 15 inch magazine. Rapid expansion of the resulting combustion gases from the conflagration then caused structural failure, passing out through the sides of the ship as well as forward and upwards via the engine room vents, expelling the aft main battery turrets and causing the stern to be detached from the rest of the hull at the aft armoured bulkhead.
The three people I have named are American, and experts on warship design & construction, by the way. They are authors of the highly respected 'Battleship Bismarck - A Design & Operational History.'
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@west264 I was being sarcastic, as should have been obvious. What makes you think the British had any ambitions to capture Bismarck? She was a listing, sinking, blazing, wreck at the end, and most of her superstructure had been blown away. Why would they have boarded her, and what would they have then done with her?
I am with Ballard & Mearns, who led two separate expeditions to the wreck site. Both said, when asked 'who sank the Bismarck?' that the British did. Not that it mattered to the Admiralty, of course. She was, and is, exactly where they wanted her to be.
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Unlikely, because after May 1941, the German surface fleet was kept strictly as a fleet in being. In the whole of the operational career of Bismarck's sister ship, Tirpitz, the only time she (he?) fired her (his?) guns in anger was during a raid on Spitzbergen, when Tirpitz successfully destroyed a large shed!
Certainly, an Iowa could have dealt with Tirpitz, or indeed Bismarck had she survived, because German ship design, and gunnery radar, was at least a generation behind the Americans & British, and the two German 'super battleships' were in reality little more than enlarged WW1 Baden class ships, but the opportunity would never have arisen.
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@simonpitt8145 I agree with you about the 4.5 inch. However, the Admiralty at the time insisted that the secondary armament of the KGVs should have some capability against surface targets. The 5.25 was, however, a dual purpose weapon, whereas Bismarck's 5.9s were strictly low angle, and had more in common with the Nelsons of the early 1920s.
I have had a number of discussions about Bismarck's outdated incremental armour when compared to the all-or-nothing used by the US Navy since the Nevadas and by the RN since the Nelsons. Bismarck's incremental armour resulted in the destruction of internal communications within the ship within 20 minutes of the action starting on 27 May, and led to widespread internal fires. Similar fires happened in other incremental ships such as Hiei, Kirishima, and Scharnhorst, whereas South Dakota & Prince of Wales, both AoN ships, received hits without serious loss of capability or internal fires.
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The Nelsons were superior, except in speed, and the North Carolinas were superior to both the Bismarck and the Nelsons, but are irrelevant because in May 1941 both were still working up, and the United States was neutral in any case.
Incidentally, why the odd fixation with whether Bismarck was sunk by gun & torpedo fire, or finished off, when a floating wreck, by her own crew? The British didn't really care which, as long as Bismarck ended up safely on the sea bed.
Enthusiasm for scuttling one's own ships does seem to be a peculiarly German trait, and not something generally encountered in the US, British, or Japanese Navies.
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@sewing1243 Hood had begun her turn, as the position of her rudder made clear. Holland was trying to close the range quickly, because at closer range Hood's weaker deck armour would not have been exposed and her 12 inch belt was not significantly weaker than Bismarck's 12.6 inch belt.
The destroyer screen was not there because they could not keep up with Hood & POW in the prevailing heavy weather. Holland's last order to them was to follow at best speed. If Holland had waited for them he might well not have arrived in time, and Bismarck & Prinz Eugen might have been loose in the Atlantic. Holland's task was to prevent such a break out, and he carried out his orders, though at a terrible cost.
Norfolk & Suffolk did intend to engage Prinz Eugen, but the action was over in minutes, before Wake-Walker could close. Hood was not a battlecruiser, she was a fast battleship. She had been modified during construction, and her armour was on a par with that of the Iron Duke class.
The Bismarck's main belt was irrelevant. Because she was constructed using an old fashioned, WW1, incremental armour system, which the US Navy abandoned in favour of all-or-nothing from the Nevada class onward, and the RN from the Nelson class onward. Consequently, her main belt was too low in the ship. It protected her machinery, but a battleship without guns is simply a target, and Rodney destroyed most of Bismarck's main guns, as well as her bridge and internal communications systems, within about 20 minutes from the commencement of the engagement. After that, Bismarck was nothing but a difficult to sink, but impotent, target.
Finally, 'The US Navy believed that Bismark's armor scheme was capable of of resisting 16" shells.' Oh no, they didn't.
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Sorry, but there is no evidence at all to support such a contention, and quite a lot to refute it. The short cuts taken at Jutland were as a result of Admiral Beatty's fixation with rate of fire, which encouraged his battle cruiser captains to act in this manner.
Nothing remotely similar happened within the battleships of the Grand Fleet, or the Fifth Battle Squadron, and the foolish practice was discontinued immediately after Jutland. Hood's last captain, Ralph Kerr, had served at Jutland, aboard Doveton Sturdee's flagship, HMS Benbow. Do you really think he would have ignored the last twenty five years, and permitted it?
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@SimanSlivar Hood wasn't a conventional battle cruiser. She had been redesigned following Jutland, and emerged with a 12 inch belt & 3 inch deck armour. Just for comparison, Iowa had a 12.1 inch belt, whilst Bismarck's was 12.6 inches. Hood's deck armour was as strong as that of a Queen Elizabeth and stronger than that of an Iron Duke. Holland was well aware of this, which is why he tried to close the range quickly. In a shorter range slogging match, Hood was not much inferior to Bismarck, and had a heavier weight of broadside. Together with Prince of Wales, despite her unprepared state, there was every reason to believe that enough damage could be inflicted to force Bismarck to abandon her mission, which was in fact what happened.
At the time, the only British capital ships capable of catching Bismarck were Hood, Renown, Repulse, King George V, and Prince of Wales. Renown was with Force H at Gibraltar, so Tovey, needing to block two exit points into the wider Atlantic, put his best & weakest ships in the Iceland-Faroes passage, and the two middling ones in the Denmark Strait.
Nelson & Rodney were both superior to Bismarck on a one-to-one basis, but lacked the speed. In short, Tovey's dispositions were correct, and proved successful, though at a great cost.
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@SimanSlivar As you don't seem to know much about the design of HMS Hood, and certainly you don't seem able to grasp the nature of Tennyson-d'Eyncourt's fundamental redesign, there really isn't much purpose in my continuing to correct your errors.
Can you really not understand that, in a close range engagement, Hood was only marginally inferior to Bismarck in terms of armour, and was actually superior in weight of broadside? Holland knew precisely what Hood's weaknesses were, which is why he attempted to close the range as quickly as possible. Just out of interest, how would you have proposed preventing Bismarck from breaking out into the Atlantic?
Would you, in addition, also argue that the Kriegsmarine should have known that Bismarck would inevitably be damaged, resulting in her eventual destruction, and therefore shouldn't have sent her, or is it only the British Admiralty that you believe are culpable because they were unable to predict future events?
It appears that your ill-informed views are based on a sense of national superiority, rather than on any attempt to understand the facts, which makes my wasting my time trying to educate you rather pointless.
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@SimanSlivar Iceland was occupied to prevent the (remote) possibility of Germany trying to get there first, and was used by the British as an air and sea base in support of the Battle of the Atlantic. In May, 1941, the British had cruiser patrols between Iceland and Greenland ( Norfolk & Suffolk) and Iceland & the Faroes (Manchester, Birmingham, and Arethusa), which were based in Iceland, and were supplemented by air patrols. So, the British hardly 'did nothing' with Iceland, did they?
Bismarck & Prinz Eugen actually sailed north of Iceland, through the Denmark Strait. The alternative would have been to sail to the south, between Iceland and the Faroes. In either case, the Admiralty, rightly, calculated that their (Iceland based) naval patrols would spot them, and this would enable one of the two British task forces to engage them.
Is that what you mean by using Iceland?
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@PaulKasner Whilst HMS Hood might have been designed as a battlecruiser, the modifications made during building resulted in what was, by 1920s standards, a fast battleship. Her belt armour was as thick as that of the Orion, KGV, and Iron Duke classes, and her horizontal armour was actually stronger than that of the Iron Dukes. Only the R class and the QE class of RN warships in service at the time were better armoured.
Hood didn't outgun every other ship in the fleet in WW2. The only capital ships she outgunned were Renown & Repulse, and she was herself heavily outgunned by the Nelsons.
Finally, it wasn't the instructors than fixated upon rate of fire, it was the commander of the Battlecruiser Fleet, David Beatty. The Grand Fleet itself followed safety protocols, as did the 5th Battle Squadron, attached to Beatty's force at Jutland.
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@manilajohn0182 When did I suggest that Prinz Eugen was responsible? The Prinz Eugen theory is actually the least likely. PE used HE rather that AP ammunition throughout, and the hit caused a fire among ready use UP & four inch ammunition, but nothing more. At least, according the AB Tilburn, one of the survivors who was on the boat deck.
'Captain Leach (who was Director of Naval Ordinance prior to his posting as Captain of Prince of Wales) and Lieutenant Commander Lawson of Prince of Wales both stated in a post battle interrogation at Scapa Flow that exploding UP ammunition caused the loss of Hood, and their views are shared by Ted Briggs.' When were these statements made? They are, to say the least, contrary to Leach's witness statement. Briggs, on the bridge, was even less likely to make any judgement. Where did he make this alleged claim?
The evidence Lawson actually gave was as follows:-
LIEUTENANT COMMANDER CECIL GRAHAM LAWSON. ROYAL NAVY. "H.M.S. PRINCE OF WALES". Called and cautioned.
313. Are you Lieutenant Commander Cecil Graham Lawson. Royal Navy of "H.M.S. Prince Of Wales".
Yes.
314. Where were you and what was your duty?
I was at the periscope in the emergency conning position of "A" turret. I had been watching the "Bismarck" fire at the commencement of the action and then I trained my periscope on to the "Hood" and was very surprised to see that she was on fire between the after funnel and "X" turret. It appeared to me that she was very heavily on fire. Another point that much impressed me was that dense volumes of smoke were pouring out of the superstructure, the entire length of the boat-deck. I then turned to watch the "Bismarck" fire. I knew we were altering course and I turned my periscope to try to view the "Hood" but could see nothing of her anywhere until I saw on the water and enormous patch of oil with a few flames flickering on it.
315. What was the colour of the smoke you saw pouring out of "Hood's" starboard side?
It appeared to be all black.
316. Did you notice if the torpedo doors in the "Hood's" side were open?
I did not notice that.
WITNESS WITHDREW.
(EVIDENCE OF NO GREAT VALUE.)
Leach's Evidence, or at least the relevant part of it, was :-
'We opened fire half a minute approximately after "Hood" and as far as I can recollect it was about the third or fourth salvo from the enemy which caused the explosion in "Hood".
I happened to be looking at "Hood" at the moment when a salvo arrived and it appeared to be across the ship somewhere about the mainmast. In that salvo there were, I think, two shots short and one over, but it may have been the other way round. But I formed the impression at the time that something had arrived on board "Hood" in a position just before the mainmast and slightly to starboard. It was not a very definite impression that I had, but it was sufficiently definite to make me look at "Hood" for a further period.
I in fact wondered what the result was going to be, and between one and two seconds after I formed that impression an explosion took place in the "Hood" which appeared to me to come from very much the same position in the ship. There was a very fierce upward rush of flame the shape of a funnel, rather a thin funnel, and almost instantaneously the ship was enveloped in smoke from one end to the other.
Subsequently beyond glancing in the direction of the "Hood" I was fully occupied in attending to other things and I had no very distinct impression of anything after that except that I formed the impression that the gunwale of the "Hood" was just showing outside the cloud of smoke and quite a short distance above the water, I should say about two to three feet. I am not certain what part of the ship that was.'
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@keighlancoe5933 You might be being a bit generous to say that they were half built. Temeraire was only laid down on 1 June, 1939, and Lion on 4 July, 1939. Construction was suspended on 15 November, 39, recommenced in May, 1940, and suspended again in November, 1940. Only 4 of the 16 inch guns, and no turrets, were ever made.
They were intended to have the same armour as the KGVs, and, with 9 x 16 inch guns, would have been formidable ships. Vanguard gives some idea of how they might have appeared, although of course she was completed with the four twin 15 inch turrets from Courageous & Glorious.
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@colindebourg9012 You haven't mentioned the outdated, incremental, armour layout, the obsolete 4 turret twin gun main armament, the low angle 5.9 inch secondary armament, the flimsy radar which tended to (and did) fail when the guns fired, the internal communications network placed above the armour, which consequently failed within minutes of the 27 May action commencing, the belt armour thinner than that of the Nelsons or the KGVs (both of which, unlike Bismarck, were Treaty designs, displacing around 10,000 tons less) and the deck armour, much thinner than that of the Nelsons & KGVs.
Indeed, start of the art, if you were building Bismarck in 1926 or thereabouts.
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Comparative decks armour of WW1 battleships :-
Orion class 4 inches, King George V class, 4 inches, Iron Duke class 2.5 inches, Queen Elizabeth class 3 inches, Revenge class 4 inches, Helgoland class 1.8 inches, Kaiser class 2 inches, Konig class 1.2 inches. These were all classes which saw action at Jutland.
The three British battlecruisers which were lost at Jutland all had deck armour as thick, or thicker, than the German battleSHIP classes listed above.
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@kakapomax There was never any suggestion that Hood's guns could have been upgraded from 15 inch. Hood was due to have received a major modernisation after work on Queen Elizabeth had been completed, but as this commenced in 1937 but didn't complete until early 1941 the war had intervened. Had the reconstruction been carried out, she would have emerged with newer, lighter, engines, better armour, and looking something like a four turret version of either Renown or the KGV class, depending upon what type of secondary armament was chosen. Whichever was chosen, however, her main armament would have remained 8 x 15 inch guns, as there was no way in which 16 inch guns could have been incorporated into 15 inch barbettes. The Germans did propose something vaguely similar with Gneisenau, replacing 11 inch triples with 15 inch twins, but never managed to carry it out. This conversation is indeed pointless, because you are suggesting something which was never even contemplated, largely because it was a physical impossibility. Cost, or treaty limitations, were irrelevant. If you have access to any document which claims anything different, please tell me what this document is.
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Not really. The Nelsons, the Colorados, the North Carolinas, Nagato, and, later, the South Dakotas, the Iowas, and the Yamatos, all had bigger main calibre main armaments. Bismarck's broadside was actually, lighter than that of the Nelsons, Hood, the KGVs, the Queen Elizabeths, and the Revenges. As well as several classes of US, Japanese, Italian, and French battleships.
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As to your later comment, i.e, :-
doveton sturdee obsolete design ?? What did you expect from the 1940's technologyb??cruise missiles and a rail gun?? Lolz the Germans would've have won the war 🤣 😂 😆 😅 Your mighty hood pride is at the bottom of the ocean , Bismarck too but he went down with pride
It is, as Abe Lincoln, or perhaps Mark Twain, better to remain silent and appear foolish, than to speak & prove it, as you have just done. Bismarck was obsolete at the time she was built. She had four twin turrets, when other navies were building three turret designs. This resulted in a longer, heavier ship, than necessary. She had a low angle secondary armament, unlike the DP weapons fitted on the contemporary ships of other nations, and her armour layout, of the incremental type, had been superceded in the US Navy for 20 years, and in the Royal Navy for fifteen. Her thickness of armour was inferior to that of the British Nelsons & King George Vs, which also had a heavier weight of broadside.
All Bismarck really had was the speed to escape action. Once she lost that, she was out of her league, as was demonstrated on 27 May when a 15 year old battleship put most of her main armament, and her bridge and command staff, out of action in about 20 minutes.
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@manilajohn0182 The boat deck fire had nothing to do with the loss of Hood. Two of the survivors actually testified to this effect. Tilburn, whose action station was on the boat deck, stated that the fire ignited ready use 4 inch & UP ammunition, but that all safety doors were closed, and Briggs, on the bridge, heard a report of the fire given to Admiral Holland, whose last known words, in response, were 'leave it until the ammunition is gone.'
Hood was unaffected until a 15 inch shell from Bismarck detonated her 4 inch magazine, triggering off a 15 inch magazine. The Prinz Eugen nonsense is a recent, modern, myth.
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Holland knew of Hood's weaknesses, and was trying to close the range as quickly as possible. He was willing to risk having his T crossed in order to get close quickly, but he lost contact with Bismarck & Prinz Eugen for a few critical minutes as his force approached.
It would have been better to have Prince of Wales as the leading ship, as Tovey himself later remarked, but Holland, like any other naval commander of the time, would never have considered placing himself in what critics could later call a safer place.
Prinz Eugen fired HE shells throughout. Despite the views of recent fantasists, she started a boat deck fire, but nothing more.
The silhouettes of the two German ships were very similar, especially when viewed at an angle and in poor light. There was no reason for Wake-Walker to interfere in Holland's decisions, although Hood's gunnery officer might have been expected to spot the error, as, indeed, Leach in Prince of Wales already had.
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@GeeBee909 Nonsense. You should read any of the books about Exercise Rhine. Bismarck was damaged by Prince of Wales on 24 May. As a result, Admiral Lutjens abandoned his mission, and headed for St. Nazaire for repairs. Bismarck was crippled on 26 May by a torpedo from a Fleet Air Arm Swordfish which wrecked her steering and several compartment aft.
On the morning of 27 May, she was engaged by two British battleships, and within the first twenty minutes had lost most of her main armament, her forward superstructure, and her command staff. After that, she was little more than a practice target. By the end, she had lost her internal communications, was heavily on fire internally, was settling by the stern, and listing heavily.
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@GeeBee909 What is nonsense is your claim that 'After the damage occurred, the captain wanted to steer the ship to a repair dry dock in France, and would have done so (AND made it) there EXCEPT they could not steer the ship, forcing them to stay at sea, sailing on a rudderless ship.' The damage to the aft steering compartments did not occur during the first action, during which Bismarck was hit by Prince of Wales, but two days later, long after Bismarck had begun making for St. Nazaire. Until the Swordfish attack, Bismarck was able to steer, but after it, she wasn't going anywhere. You don't seem to be aware of the fact that there were three separate incidents :-
1). The Action in the Denmark Strait on 24 May, which resulted in Lutjens deciding to make for St. Nazaire.
2). The Swordfish attack on 26 May, which crippled Bismarck's steering and weakened her stern.
3). The destruction of Bismarck, actually more an execution than a battle, on 27 May.
That is why your post was nonsense. Your lack of knowledge.
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The (WW1) footage of a deck mounted gun has no relevance to the manner in which the shells and charges within a 15 inch barbette were handled. Certainly, the battlecruisers at Jutland were lost because of the insistence of their admiral that rate of fire was of paramount importance, which led to unacceptable shortcuts, but this foolish practice was limited to the battlecruiser fleet, and never followed within the Grand Fleet itself. Similarly, the practice was discontinued after Jutland, and there is absolutely no evidence at all to suggest that anything like this happened aboard Hood or, indeed, any other British capital ship, in WW2.
The famous movie footage of the explosion of Barham isn't really relevant. Barham suffered three torpedo hits which opened up most of her side. As she capsized, an explosion in her four inch magazine triggered off her main 15 inch magazines. An unmodernised WW1 battleship could not have been expected to survive such catastrophic damage, but this had nothing to do with cordite handling procedures.
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'Untold?' Enthusiastists for Bismarck never stop claiming that their wondership was not sunk by the British. To them, loss of her main armament, her bridge, her command staff, her internal communications, and the fact that she was settling by the stern, developing an increasing list, and was a mass of internal fires, only amounted to, in the words of the Black Knight from the Monty Python movie, nothing but scratches.
Quite what the British would have wanted with a shattered sinking wreck they never make clear. Stiil, if the idea that scuttling lets them believe that their Bismarck really wasn't quite so sunk, so be it.
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@lasha4409 The Admiralty had begun a series of improvements to the older ships within the battlefleet, excluding the R class which were deemed to be too obsolete and were to have been replaced by the King George V class. Malaya received a partial reconstruction from 1934-1936, Warspite a complete modernisation between 1934 & 1937, and Renown between 1936 & 1939. Both Queen Elizabeth & Valiant were taken out of service in 1937 for complete modernisation. Hood & either Repulse or Barham would have been next, but obviously the war intervened.
My information on Hood's armour comes from Siegfried Breyer 'Battleships & Battlecruisers of the World, 1905 -1970' and Maurice Northcott 'HMS Hood, Design & Construction .' Hood, like all British capital ships prior to the Nelsons, had older, outdated, incremental, armour, (as incidentally, did the Scharnhorsts & the Bismarcks) but I haven't come across any source which describes her horizontal armour as less than 3 inches, the same as the QEs and half an inch thicker than the Iron Dukes.
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@barbaradyson6951 Yes, I am writing with hindsight, as is everyone else who has expressed a view on here. I wonder, however, how many of the people on here have actually met one of the Hood survivors and spoken to him about the battle and the sinking, as I did when working on my thesis at University?
I have also read the reports of the various Boards of Inquiry, and am familiar with the views expressed by Mearns and White. Actually, the late Director of Naval Construction, Sir Stanley V. Goodall, who worked on the aborted post WW1 battleship designs, including G3, and subsequently on the design of the KGV class, did suggest that the loss of the Hood was a result of the explosion of her torpedoes, but Goodall died in 1965, and later studies suggest he was wrong in this view.
Still, in one respect I agree with you. As a professional historian specialising in the Royal Navy of WW2, I am something of an expert, so thanks for the compliment.
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@sauronthedarklordofmordor2990 At the time of the operation, Nelson was far away, at Freetown, and at 23 knots lacked the speed to get there. The British needed to block the two exist points into the wider Atlantic, and Tovey had four capital ships with the speed to do it. His best and weakest, KGV & Repulse, were placed in the Iceland-Faroes Gap, and the middle two, Hood & PoW, in the Denmark Strait.
By the way, Holland was a Vice-Admiral, although you are correct about why he acted as he did.
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@sauronthedarklordofmordor2990 Hood was as well armoured as a Queen Elizabeth, with a similar weight of broadside, but was also about six knots faster. With her comparatively (by 1941 standards) heavy AA outfit, ideally she would have been better deployed in the Mediterranean, but if that had happened, which ships would the Admiralty have available to block the Denmark Strait & the Iceland Faroes Gap? The two Nelsons were both capable of dealing with Bismarck, but were several knots slower, which only left KGV, the semi-operational PoW, Repulse, and possibly Renown, assuming that Hood had been used with Force H to replace her. Renown & Repulse, unlike Hood, were traditional lightly armoured battlecruisers.
Hood had been part of the Home Fleet which searched unsuccessfully for Scharnhorst & Gneisenau during Operation Berlin. After that, the two never appeared in the Atlantic again. German cruisers rarely appeared in the Atlantic, German destroyers never did, and capital ships were, for obvious reasons, not used as anti-submarine vessels. Artillery support was something which was rarely required in 1941, and when it was the older and obsolete 'R' class battleships were far more suited to the task, as their lack of speed wouldn't be a problem.
Hood in 1941 was still regarded by both the British & German navies as a front line fighting unit. What some people assume to have been inevitable was far from obvious except with the benefit of hindsight.
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What you appear to be saying is that the Germans, by scuttling their own ship, effectively committed mass suicide. Nonsense of course. The is no way of assessing how many men were still alive when Bismarck sank. Moreover, it is a documented fact that Admiral Lutjens had signalled the German Admiralty to send a U-boat to collect Bismarck's war diary, and that Kerneval had been ordered to send U-boats to Bismarck's location. Dorsetshire & Maori were picking up survivors when a U--boat was reported. Would you really suggest that Captain Martin should stop his cruiser (with a crew of over 850) in mid ocean, and make her a sitting target?
Incidentally, when Scharnhorst & Gneisenau sank the carrier Glorious and her two escorting destroyers in 1940 off Norway, how many men did they rescue from the water? Actually, rather less than the British did from Bismarck. In fact, none.
You really do not understand WW2 naval warfare. The enemy is the ship, not the crew, and the crew of Bismarck were as horrified at what happened to Hood as the British crews were at what happened to Bismarck. As a matter of interest, for many years survivors of Bismarck had annual reunions with survivors from Dorsetshire.
Do you really believe it matters whether Bismarck sank as a result of naval gunfire, or whether some members of her crew helped speed her on her way?
The British Admiralty didn't care either way, as long as she ended up where she did.
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@jagdvervand44 Why do you think it matters? The Royal Navy, largely in the form of HMS Rodney, reduced Bismarck to a helpless target within about 20 minutes on the morning of 27 May, 1941.
I appreciate that the Germans quite frequently scuttled their own ships, unlike the Americans, British, or Japanese, but why do you think this is in any way something which reflects credit on them/
Incidentally, if you get your knowledge of history from TV documentaries, this may well explain a lot. Try reading works by proper historians, not simply accepting the opinions of celebrity film directors.
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'The Battle of Jutland, in 1916, demonstrated Battlecruisers, and especially those designed like the Hood, were very vulnerable to Magazine Explosions.' Actually, it demonstrated only that storing munitions outside the magazine, as Beatty encouraged his captains to do, in order to increase rate of fire, bordered on the idiotic, which is why it didn't happen again after Jutland.
If Hood, after her post-Jutland redesign, was inadequately armoured against plunging fire, then what does that say about the Iron Dukes, the WW1 King George V, and the Queen Elizabeths, what had the same thickness of deck armour.
Of course Hood was aging by 1941, when she was 20 years old, but her armour was not particularly weak.
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@everettjohnson3947 Really? When USS Washington sank the Kirishima on 15 November, 1942, she opened fire at midnight on 14/15 November, and Kirishima sank at 03.25. Kirishima was originally a battlecruiser, modernised in 1934 -36 into a fast battleship. Her belt after modernisation was 8 inches, Bismarck was constructed as a battleship from the outset, with a belt of 12.6 inches. Furthermore, Washington approached Kirishima undetected and opened fire at point blank range, of 5800 yards. Rodney, by contrast, opened fire at 23400 yards.
Your opinion that an hour and 52 minutes to sink Bismarck was a 'pretty long time' therefore, rather suggests that your understanding of naval warfare is less than thorough.
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@dwightehowell8179 'This was cited as one possible explanation and one of the few possible. I said it was probable.' Which, being translated, means that you want to believe the idea, but not to the extent of trying to defend it, I suppose?
'You on the other hand said it did not happen which is something you can't prove to be true since you weren't there.' I do know the approach that the Royal Navy took to safe munitions storage in the post-Jutland period, and I also know the attitude of Hood's captain, Ralph Kerr, who had served at Jutland, about the issue. Do you?
If 'being there' is your only criterion for study of historical events, then you do realise that, in effect, you cancel the idea of any study of history prior to around 1950, do you? A colleague of mine lectures on ancient history, and his specific area of expertise is the Wars of the Diadochi. Should I tell him that you demand he finds alternative employment, as he never even met Ptolemy or Seleucus?
If you really want to know what actually caused Hood's destruction, perhaps you should view Drachinfel's excellent video on the subject?
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@fmyoung Simply false. Do you rely on Google for all your information? It would, I fear, explain much.
I refer you to the 'British Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry Day 20. Testimony of Alexander Carlisle.
You will find Carlisle saying that he prepared plans which would enable the Olympics to carry 32 lifeboats, on the basis of two per davit. On boat would be on the deck, and the second on the davit, hanging over the side of the ship. The provision, therefore, would have no effect on the space available on the deck.
As I have tried to get through to you on numerous occasions, the stronger davits were fitted, but as the Board of Trade did not upgrade their regulations extra boats were not.
Carlisle states that the proposals were discussed, in a five or ten minute conversation about lifeboats, with Pirries, Ismay and Sanderson, in October 1909. It was agreed that the davits should be fitted, in the event that regulations were altered.
Carlisle does not suggest that anyone questioned the idea.
Instead of reading some of the idiocies on Google, why not look at the primary evidence for once?
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@sinisabalentovic9617 Firstly, Churchill had nothing to do with the dispositions of the Home Fleet. The Admiralty made such decisions. It always amuses me to read posts blaming Churchill for everything from the Hundred Years' War to Covid 19.
Secondly, in May 1941, the Home Fleet had four capital ships able to catch Bismarck. These were King George V, Hood, Prince of Wales, and Repulse. I have listed these in order of fighting capability. Once worked up, Prince of Wales would have been superior to Hood, but at the time she wasn't.
There were two exits into the main Atlantic, these being the Denmark Strait and the Iceland-Faroes Gap. Bismarck & Prinz Eugen could have taken either, the Home Fleet needed to block both. Consequently, the best & fourth best ships went to the Iceland-Faroes Gap, and the 2nd & 3rd to the Denmark Strait. The assumption was that Hood & Prince of Wales, and King George V & Repulse, were able to take on Bismarck, or at least seriously damage her, wherever she appeared, especially since both battlegroups had cruisers in support. Hood, by the way, was not a normal battlecruiser, but had armour as strong as that of a WW1 battleship.
The assumption, by the way, was correct. The damage Bismarck sustained in the action was sufficient to force her to abandon her mission and head for France, thus ensuring that the Atlantic convoy network was not subjected to surface attack.
Both Nelson and Rodney were more than capable of dealing with Bismarck in a one to one action (as Rodney demonstrated when she destroyed Bismarck as a fighting ship in about 20 minutes on 27 May) but both were about six knots slower. If Bismarck encountered one, under normal circumstances she could turn & run.
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Odd, then, that within 20 minutes Bismarck had lost most of her main armament, her superstructure & command staff, and her internal communications. By her end, she was suffering from major internal fires, a 20 degree list, and was slowly sinking by the stern. Why would the British have wanted to capture a sinking, burning, wreck? Their capital ships were already short of fuel.
I presume you have inspected the wreck site? David Mearns, who has, identified numerous penetrations of the armour.
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@davidmcintyre8145 Well, in that case, I am sure you know that the British were given dispensation to build two 16 inch gunned battleships, neither of which should exceed 35000 tons, because of the US Colorado class. Thus, a G3 was never an option.
Hood was not a 'mish mash' design. She had been extensively modified whilst being built, and had a belt equal to, and horizontal armour half an inch thicker, than the Iron Duke class. Certainly, she had incremental armour, but so did every RN capital ship prior to the Nelson class.
The UP projectile mounting, of which Hood had five, was hardly 'conceived by Churchill.' As First Lord, Churchill did ask Sir Alwyn Crow who was the director of the Projectile Development Establishment at Fort Halstead, for a means of laying an 'aerial minefield' to protect RN ships from German bombers. Hood, in point of fact, was already, with 7 twin 4 inch AA mountings, 3 x 8 barrelled two pounder close range AA mountings, and 5 quadruple 0.5 inch machine gun mountings, better equipped in this regard than most warships in 1941. Crow came up with the UP mounting, which was a failure, but this was hardly Churchill's fault.
The hit on Hood's boat deck from Prinz Eugen did ignite UP ammunition in ready use lockers, as well as some 4 inch ammunition, but this played no part in Hood's sinking.
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@angrydoggy9170 The carrier disabled her, HMS Rodney finished her as a fighting ship by destroying most of her main armament, her bridge, and her command staff, in the first 20 minutes, after which Rodney, King George V, Norfolk, and Dorsetshire, completed what was, in effect, the annihilation of a wallowing practice target.
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@z1az285 Actually, Hood's deck armour was on a par with that of the Queen Elizabeths, though not comparable to the Nelsons or the KGVs. It was, by the way, superior to any WW1 German battleship except the Badens. She was not a traditional battlecruiser, being much more a fast battleship.
Hood, by the way, had main gunnery radar, unlike Bismarck at the time of the engagement. Her error was, initially, to target Prinz Eugen and then to attempt to switch targets.
Are you suggesting that the British crew was inferior? Perhaps you might explain how you reach that conclusion. I determine superiority by study of armour and firepower. In both categories, KGV & Rodney had the edge, despite, unlike Bismarck, being built within the 35,000 ton limit.
The Iowas were built almost five years later than Bismarck. They had greatly superior sensors and speed, although they were weaker in terms of belt and deck armour to both the Nelsons and the KGVs. They were also weaker, in terms of belt armour, to the Bismarcks, and only marginally better off, by .1 of an inch, in terms of deck armour. Certainly, the Iowas were a class apart in terms of weight of broadside to all three of the others.
You don't need to apologise, when you are, in point of fact, wrong.
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@z1az285 For a neutral commentator, you are strangely one-sided. mein herr. What do you think misidentifying Prinz Eugen for Bismarck proves about the relative capabilities of the ships themselves? Hood was 20 years old at the time, and inferior, though actually not that inferior, to Bismarck. Rodney was 15 years old, but certainly not inferior.
'Also you conviniently disregard watertight compartmentation and quality of steel on both Bismarck and Iowa.' If you wish for a detailed technical discussion, you need to prove yourself worthy of one, and your lack of knowledge displayed to date suggests that you aren't. You show all the traits of the traditional wehraboo, in that you claim that, although Bismarck had a lignter broadside, and weaker armour, laid out to an outdated pattern, she was still superior because she was built using magic German steel.
As to her compartmentation, it seems you aren't particularly familiar with her design, which was simply an enlargement of the High Seas Fleet's WW1 Baden class. The Badens were excellent ships in 1918, but battleship technology had moved on somewhat since then, even if German battleship design hadn't, for obvious reasons, kept pace. You might wish to examine Bismarck's other major design flaw, the placement of her internal communications above her main belt. As a result, these were quickly destroyed, in about 20 minutes or so, on 27 May, when Rodney's first salvoes took out most of her armament, her bridge, and her command staff.
Iowa is not relevant to this discussion. I have already discussed her in earlier posts in any case. I don't recall referring to her speed, so why do you feel the need to bring it up, and I have already said that an undamaged Bismarck, like the Scharnhorsts, had the ability to use an extra knot or to to escape from battle.
Actually, the Nelsons were, except in speed, superior to the KGVs, simply because of their heavier broadsides, resulting from the British fitting 14 inch rather than 16 inch guns in order to comply with Naval Treaties. By sticking to the rules, this gave the KGVs a broadside of 15,900 lbs, which was adequate, but nowhere near the 21375 lbs of 9 x 16 inch which might have been achieved.
I am silent about Yamato because she is entirely irrelevant. Firstly, she was still in the latter stages of construction, only commissioning about seven months after Hood & Bismarck sank, and secondly, she was intended to operate on the other side of the world. Now, if you can demonstrate that Yamato might have dramatically appeared in the Atlantic in May, 1941, then please feel free so to do. The same comment might also apply to the Iowas, or Vanguard, come to that.
In short, I find arguing with wehraboos, even ones who claim not to be, tedious, and if you can't stick to the subject instead of flying off at odd tangents, I won't reply further, as I have better things to do.
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@z1az285 Congratulations! You are the first person who claims to be 'impartial' who believes that incremental was superior to AoN as an armour layout. Perhaps you might explain why the world's three largest navies between the wars, Britain, the US, and Japan, all designed their capital ships on AoN rather than incremental principals? Were they all less intelligent than your brilliant Germans? Or might it have been that German designers were simply kept in the dark about these advances?
You might care to read the opinions of Dulin, Garske, Breyer, or Friedman on the subject, or even an excellent article by Joseph Czarnecki, entitled 'All or Nothing Protection.' His last paragraph is particularly enlightening :-
'In Second World War action, the "all or nothing" scheme proved successful. Incremental armoring did not, although available test cases were few. HMS Hood, featuring the older incremental armor was lost most probably to a shell passing through a thinner upper belt and into a magazine. DKM Bismarck also featured incremental armoring, as was largely laid waste during its final battle above its armored deck by AP shells detonated by a medium thickness upper belt. HIJMS Hiei and Kirishima, both with the older protective scheme, suffered heavily from fires started in their casemates by AP shells. These fire contributed along with other damage to their untenability and eventual loss after damage off Guadalcanal. Details of DKM Scharnhorst's loss are lacking, but probably resemble Bismarck. In contrast USS South Dakota came off fairly well when a power failure and an ill-considered turn silhouetted the ship to Japanese fire off Guadalcanal. The ship was extensively hit by common, HE, and AP shells in the superstructure, most of which passed through while causing relatively little damage.'
I have never heard of Daniel Hammer, by the way.
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@muzikizfun Thank you for discrediting your own argument. You wrote ; 'Lack of speed was determined to be the major reason the British battleships suffered heavy damage.'
I responded by asking :- 'Oh, and explain how the Nelsons & the KGVs were among the best armoured battleships in the world at the time of their construction. In terms of belts, only the Colorado class were stronger, though with much weaker deck armour.'
You then, finally, replied with a long, entertaining, rant about Jackie Fisher and battlecruisers, followed by a comment which said that :- ' Several Battleships were damaged but didn't explode like the battlecruisers,' which was questionable, as at Jutland Warspite was moderately damaged, Barham & Malaya received lesser damage, all with the battlecruiser force, whilst Colossus was the only Grand Fleet battleship hit by shellfire at all. If your really want to see a fleet which came out of Jutland with numerous damaged battleships, look at the one Scheer commanded.
"The Hood, designed in 1916, was to be larger, faster, and more heavily armed. But in deference to Admiral Fishers' vision, her armor was significantly thinned in order to reduce her displacement and increase her speed." Wrong, and irrelevant, as Hood was redesigned after Jutland in order to improve her protection. She actually marked the end of the battlecruiser era, and emerged as the first true fast battleship. As her designer, the Director of Naval Construction (DNC), Sir Eustace Tennyson-d'Eyncourt, was instructed, the design for the Admiral class should: "take the armament, armour and engine power of Queen Elizabeth as the standard and build around them a hull which should draw as little water as was considered practicable and safe, and which should embody all the latest protection and improvements against underwater attack." Does that sound, even to you, like 'deference to Admiral Fisher's vision?' As I remarked, moreover, those instructions pre-dated the improvements in design of the post-Jutland period. Fisher, by the way, had resigned in May, 1915.
"Battleships of the same era had hull and DECK plating between 12"-15" in thickness." Your cut & paste approach has let you down. Let's look at the deck armour of the battleships around at the time that Hood was constructed. Say, 1916 -1921.
Valiant : 3 inches.
Ramillies : 4 inches.
Konig : 1.2 inches.
Baden : 4.7 inches.
California : 3.5 inches.
Colorado : 3.5 inches.
Nagato : 2.5 inches.
Lorraine : 2.8 inches.
Andrea Doria : 1.6 inches.
Sevastopol : 1.5 inches.
Now, please name me any battleship of the period which had DECK plating between 12"-15" in thickness." I anticipate your response with eager, anticipation.' Just to confuse you further, even the 1940 Yamatos had deck armour of 'only' 9.1 inches, and the South Dakotas 5 inches.
Oh, and you still haven't actually replied to my comment about the Nelsons & the KGVs, which had the thickest belt armour of any warship in existence in 1940 except the Coloradoes.
Facts are indeed very useful tools. But not when, as in your case, they are used either irrelevantly or simply inaccurately. If you want a debate about the battlecruiser concept, this is not the place.
Perhaps you should abandon your mission, steam (metaphorically) for St.Nazaire, and hope not to encounter Swordfish, Rodney, or King George V, on your way there?
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In 1939, North Carolina was still two years away from completion, and Yamato even further away. Certainly, Hood did not benefit from AoN armour, but there again, neither did Bismarck. Hood's armour, whether she was called a battlecruiser or a fast battleship, was on a par with that of the Queen Elizabeth class. Moreover, the between the wars Royal Navy defined a battlecruiser primarily in terms of speed, rather than armour. For example, the G3s, with planned AoN armour which involved an angled 14 inch belt, and 5 inch decks (thicker than the actual armour of the Bismarcks North Carolinas, South Dakotas, and Iowas) were still described as battlecruisers because of their planned speed of 32 knots.
Certainly, the Colorados were better armoured and had a heavier weight of broadside, but they were eight knots slower, and thus whether to engage or withdraw would have been Bismarck's in any such theoretical encounter. In May, 1941, the only capital ships available to the Home Fleet with the ability to catch and engage Bismarck were King George V, the partly worked up Prince of Wales, Hood, & Repulse. Tovey placed his best and weakest pair in the Iceland-Faroes Gap, and the middle two, POW & Hood, in the Denmark Strait, thus ensuring that Bismarck & Prinz Eugen could not reach the wider Atlantic (and thus be more difficult to bring to battle, as Operation Berlin had demonstrated) unchallenged. What happened to Hood was something which could not have been foreseen.
Moreover, the strategy worked. As a result of the action, Bismarck received damage from Prince of Wales which obliged Lutjens to abandon his mission and make for St. Nazaire.
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